31 Days of Horror: "Night of the Creeps"
by Sean McTiernan
Many horrible things have been done in the name of collegiate tomfoolery. Yesterday Vice unearthed Todd Phillips’ horrific lost documentary “Frat House” on Google video. More terrifying and more gross than anything I’ll be writing about, “Frat House” gave me some insight into the fact that frats are not just a story device fabricated for American comedies and they do, in fact, actually exist. So what better to look to for some light relief than an 80s B-movie classic in which a corpse-related prank goes awry, releasing zombifiying brain worms on the entire campus?
“Night of The Creeps” started out as a writing exercise for director Fred Dekker: He resolved to write in a B-movie in 7 days. If he didn’t have it finished in a week, he would throw it all away but if he managed to complete it, he’d make it. If you had seven days to write a movie, you’d probably go for something simple, right? Like a basic slasher movie, a high school romance with a happy ending. Maybe a movie about implanting an idea in someone’s brain using a seven-layer taco dip of dreams.
Well, you certainly aren’t Fred Dekker. In “Night of the Creeps” he manages to effectively parody the genre conventions of 50s sci-fi, 80s horror and raunchy college comedies. He also decided to do this with characters that all act like they’re in a John Hughes movies, comically extreme stereotypes that still seem to have plenty of human quirks and exchange plenty of rapidfire and hilarious dialogue. That’s a lot to get done in seven days, but Fred Dekker managed it with maximum aplomb.
But “Night Of The Creeps” lightly mocks genre movies without any of that often poisonous (and regularly anti-fun) post-”Scream” irony (one of the few movies to get this right was “Slither,” which itself is a homage to “Night Of The Creeps”). Instead there are nods to its genre brethren (“Plan 9” on the TV, all the characters being named after famous directors, the whole thing taking place at Corman University) with a kind and unabashedly fanboyish approach. This is a horror comedy for people who love horror comedies and, more importantly, people who love things that are apologetically corny and awesome.
“Night of the Creeps” often gets its story dismissed on the basis that it had to be simple so it could adequately take in all the forms of schlock cinema that it wishes to exult. And while the movie clips along at a brisk pace, when you actually attempt to parse out the plot, it quickly becomes obvious how intertwined and cleverly overlapping the whole thing is. Characters die and the nerd gets the girl way before the final reel. Some potentially labyrinth subplots are wrapped up far more artfully and swiftly that expected. For a movie that some have dismissed as a mere horror-comedy artifact, there’s actually a lot of deft sleight-of-hand going on.
You could say it also pays great homage to the hardboiled detective genre, but this would be doing a great disservice to veteran character actor Tom Aktins. His performance as Detective Cameron completely transcends any sort of affectionate satire the rest of the movie does so well. He may as well be every gritty detective distilled into a single kick-ass shaped entity, arriving at opportune times to punch giant holes in the movie to let even more awesome in. And despite striding around with a shotgun and answering the phone better than anyone in schlock history (“thrill me”), he still manages to form the strongest emotional core of this movie. Most people would would balk when attacked by the walking corpse of the axe murderer that killed their best girl. Atkins manages not only to eschew fear and instead reminisce over his lost love, he also remembers you have to aim for the head. He plays everything-from dispatching brain worms with a cigarette and hairspray to frankly confessing a murder to a teenager he barely knows-in such a way that makes you wish Detective Cameron was in every movie.
The gore also looks great. Because there’s so much other stuff going on, it’s spread quite thin over the first two-thirds of the movie. Later, the exploded heads look surprisingly real. A subtle but excellent piece of animatronics gives the teasing shots of the zombie axeman a fantastic payoff. Even the zombie patient zero who slowly streaks his way around the campus disseminating brainworms has a weird split-apart look and bizarre eyes that don’t really ape any previous zombie movies too heavily. And when things finally kick of in earnest, it’s surprising how non-jokey and fully evil those infected with brainworms really look. Oh and the aliens, who everyone always forget, look cool too.
One of my personal favourite characters is the hilariously douchey Bradster, head of the frat that initiate the prank that kicks the whole movie off. He and his cronies use particularly cringe-worthy slang, leaning into their delivery of the worst examples, cleverly satirising how nothing dates a movie like out-modded youth slang. Well, it would be clever if most of the slang these guys use had returned to regular speech. The frequency and emphasis with which these jock dickheads use the word “bro” was probably hilarious at the time but now in the age of “Delocated” (“Just two bros pulling a bros-mose down the street”) it seems adorable and quaint.
“Night Of The Creeps” is like getting a giant hug from everything you like-or should like-about corny genre movies.
Sean Mc Tiernan has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone, though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum. You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.